‘The Secret History’ is a 1992 novel by American author Donna Tartt.
It is a murder mystery that is set in New England and tells the story of a group of six classics students at a small liberal arts college.
I have curated a list of the best quotes from The Secret History novel for you.
Table of Contents
The Secret History Quotes by Donna Tartt
“Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“But one mustn’t underestimate the primal appeal—to lose one’s self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“All my life, people have taken my shyness for sullenness, snobbery, bad temper of one sort or another.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“He sailed through the world guided only by the dim lights of impulse and habit, confident that his course would throw up no obstacles so large that they could not be plowed over with sheer force of momentum.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“If he had his wits about him Bunny would surely keep his mouth shut; but now, with his subconscious mind knocked loose from its perch and flapping in the hollow corridors of his skull as erratically as a bat, there was no way to be sure of anything he might do.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
Other Book Quotes: The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe and The Song of Achilles Quotes by Madeline Miller
Quotes from The Secret History
“She was a living reverie for me: the mere sight of her sparked an almost infinite range of fantasy, from Greek to Gothic, from vulgar to divine.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“There was a horrible, erratic thumping in my chest, as if a large bird was trapped inside my ribcage and beating itself to death.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Sometimes, when there’s been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over. Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
Famous The Secret History Quotes
“When you’re worried about something,’ said Henry abruptly, ‘have you ever tried thinking in a different language?” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“One likes to think there’s something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I’ve learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“What is unthinkable is undoable.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“You amaze me,” he said. “You think nothing exists if you can’t see it.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn’t be any other way.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
Best The Secret History Quotes by Donna Tartt
“Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Well if you wake up intending to murder someone at two o’clock, you hardly think what you’re going to feed the corpse for dinner.”
“Aspargus is in season,” said Francis helpfully.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Beauty is terror.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Colors so bright, they nearly broke my heart.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself – quite to one’s surprise – in an entirely different world.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“It’s beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“No. I’ve always been drawn to broken, wild terrain. The oddest tongues come from such places, and the strangest mythologies, and the oldest cities, and the most barbarous religions.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Matters progressed.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“How was it that a complex, a nervous and delicately calibrated mind like my own, was able to adjust itself perfectly after a shock like the murder, while Bunny’s eminently more sturdy and ordinary one was knocked out of kilter?” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
Powerful Quotes from Secret History
“It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children. Afraid of the dark.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, guttural verbs, and the word “postmodernist.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Besides I think it’s good to change the place where one sleeps from time to time. I believe it gives one more interesting dreams.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when character is fixed forever.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“It was a clear, black morning, encrusted with stars.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty -unless she is wed to something more meaningful -is always superficial.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“And always, always, that same toast. Live forever.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“Anything is grand if it’s done on a large enough scale.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent at Hampden.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
“After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.” ~ Donna Tartt (quote from The Secret History).
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